Friday, August 12, 2011

Private Charity works best: Fundraiser to help Oak Park single mother with lung cancer

On Sunday, Kim Liebe of Oak Park will celebrate her son Christian's fourth birthday, a day doctors told her she probably wouldn't be alive to see.

Liebe, a 36-year-old single mother, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2010, which has just a 2 percent survival rate. She was given less than a year to live.

She says she's haunted by the thought that Christian might have to grow up without her and whether he would even remember her when he's older.

"If I didn't have my son I would have given up a long time ago," Liebe said. "He's my reason every day to get up every day, to stay positive, to stay strong.

"I am all he has. I want to be here with him and I want to raise my son. Who's going to love my son the way I love my son and who is going to take care of him the way I would? It's painful and I don't know what's going to happen."

On Sunday, she and Christian will be the guests of honor at a family festival and children's fashion show at Oak Canyon Park from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Liebe's good friend, Angela Marsden, a single mother who lives in west Los Angeles, has set up a nonprofit organization called Independent Seed and helped organize A Day In The Park For Kim's Cause, a fundraiser for Liebe. It is a group effort involving Marsden and other moms in the Oak Park community. FULL STORY